In case you were wondering…

2012, a movie inspired by Mayan apocalypse myths and crackpot theories that works better as a metaphor for John Cusack’s current career – playing essentially the same role that was novel in “Sure Thing”, endearing and nostalgic in “Grosse Point Blank” and “High Fidelity” and now just comes across as ineffectual and pointless (even with the plot on your side).

It probably scores quite highly on the most improbable airplane take-offs from crumbling runways since the Battle of Britain. And even then I couldn’t quite escape thinking that they only did it once and just changed the CGI of the plane and surroundings for the other two. Other than that its geologically and geographically a bit weak. I would hope that if the Da Vinci Code did nothing else(!) it at least brought home to most people that the Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, in Paris and so you don’t need to show people that you are in Paris by having the Eiffel Tower visible from the Louvre and certainly not visible as if you could view it along the Champ de Mars. Maybe the whole Crust Displacement thing happened more than once. And even if it did its unlikely that it move the Mona Lisa from an underground specially built chamber to an office with a window view of the Eiffel Tower.

The supporting characters were just bad. Although they did do a nice setup of the aged US president potentially having a hot young wife. But she turned out to be merely his daughter and was only in the movie as the love interest for the character that was written to be played by the Denzel Washington of 10-12 years ago and instead got played by some mere wannabe. A lot of the supporting characters are played by mere wannabes, which I suppose is what happens when you only have John Cusack as the lead. Oliver Platt is good as the not-baddie but he looks like he is just phoning it in.

There’s no big bad in the movie per se, unless you think neutrinos are inherently evil – maybe those Mayans were on to something. But aside from the Bhuddist chaps and the favourably treated protagonists everyone else is morally flawed in some way by being too rich, or by sleeping with the pilot, or being bat shit crazy or Indian, or at sea, or having stolen John Cusack’s family or Japanese, or just unlucky enough to be alive but not a Billionaire (in euros, not dollars) and so gets their well-deserved comeuppance from the evil neutrinos.

There is really no point in talking about the science aspect of science fiction these days. So instead I have to wonder what kind of novel gets published in hardback and only sells 455 copies worldwide? And why did the John Cusack’s character agent/editor give him an expensive watch in anticipation of high sales yet not give him an advance big enough that 7 years later he could avoid being a chauffeur for a Russian Billionaire – although that worked out well in the end; if you don’t include the pilot(s), the bimbo, the Billionaire himself, the state of Hawaii, or indeed the rest of the world. At least the dog survived.

This entry was posted
on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 4:36 pm and is filed under mgb, movies.
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